"I ... I think you should take this one," Mrs. Mikulka shouted back.
Ransome blinked. He eyed the blue telephone. Gingerly he lifted it.
"Hello?" he said cautiously.
An unfamiliar lemony voice spoke into his ear. "It is over, Ransome. I am back."
"Who ... who are you?"
"That you will never know. There is a contingency for everything in this organization. You should know that by now. After all, every secret of this institution is at your fingertips."
"Not quite," Ransome blurted out. "There is you, and the meaning of the organization's code name. I don't suppose I can pry that out of you?"
There was a pause on the other end. Then the lemony voice resumed speaking. "The answer to that and other questions you have may be obtained by calling a certain number."
"I have a pen in my hand," Ransome said quickly. The lemony voice gave a phone number.
Then, abruptly, the man hung up, saying, "Good-bye, Ransome. "
"Wait! What about-?"
Ransome replaced the receiver. He looked at the telephone number. It bore a local exchange. In fact, it seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn't quite place it. After taking a few deep breaths to calm himself Norvell Ransome began punching the keypad with his fat stubby fingers.
He clapped the receiver to his ear and waited for the first ring. As his watery eyes jerked around the room nervously, he noticed the number in the plastic window under the blue telephone's keypad.
It was identical to the number he had dialed. "What on earth!" he muttered. Then, fear rising from his Brobdingnagian belly, he hastily let go of the receiver.
The problem was that he could not. His muscles would not respond. There was a sudden sharp whiff of something burning in his nose. He never realized that it was his own nostril hairs because the neurons of his brain had died and his corneas turned cataract white from the two thousand volts coursing through his blubbery body. He continued jerking and spasming even after he had been cooked to death.
Then the lights blew and his face hit the desk edge with a mushy whump!
Chapter 25
Folcroft Sanitarium was blacked out for no more than forty-five seconds before the emergency generators came on, filling Dr. Smith's hospital room with harsh white light. The oscilloscope beeped into life, but it did not register Smith's heart rate, for Smith was no longer hooked up to it.
Instead, he was sitting on an aluminum wheelchair, a robe covering his thin legs.
"What happened?" Remo wanted to know.
"Ransome used the telephone," Smith said tersely.
"You really should have better wiring," Remo remarked.
"The wiring is fine. Now, would one of you please push me to the elevator. We are going to reclaim my office. "
Chiun turned to Remo. "Remo, do as Emperor Smith says."
"Emperor?" Remo and Dr. Dooley said simultaneously.
"Now," Chiun added sharply.
Obligingly Remo got behind Smith and started pushing. Chiun and Dr. Dooley followed them to the elevator. They rode one floor down in silence.
Mrs. Eileen Mikulka jumped to her feet at the sight of her employer being wheeled up to her desk. "Dr. Smith!" she exclaimed.
"Mrs. Mikulka, you have the rest of the day off," Smith said firmly, his gray eyes on the closed door to his office.
Mrs. Mikulka didn't ask questions. She grabbed her purse and ran.
The Master of Sinanju took the lead. He found the door locked. He placed both palms to the panel and exerted what seemed to the others like testing pressure.
In response, the door groaned metallically and fell inward.
Remo rolled Smith over the horizontal panel, remarking to Chiun, "You really have a way with doors, you know that?"
"It is Sinanju," Chiun returned. "Something obviously beyond your white mentality."
Once inside, everyone fell silent as they absorbed the sight of Norvell Ransome collapsed behind the desk.
Remo smelled the air. "Smells like burning hair."
"That is one result of death by electrocution," Smith said while Dr. Dooley placed a hand over Ransome's fat-sheathed heart. Feeling nothing, he shifted to the carotid artery. He looked up.
"This man is dead," he said hoarsely.
Noticing that Ransome clutched a half-melted telephone receiver in one hand, Remo asked of Smith, "What happened to him?"
"He dialed the wrong number."
"Yeah?" Remo said slowly. "I don't suppose this has anything to to with that lever you had me throw?"
"It armed the telephone."
"Armed?" Remo said blankly. "How do you arm a telephone?"
"By pushing the little lever, of course," Chiun said impatiently. "Emperor, shall I remove the garbage?"
"How can you talk of garbage at a time like this?" Remo asked.
No one answered him. The Master of Sinanju stepped behind the desk. He plucked something from one voluminous sleeve and lifted Ransome's slack face up by the hair. Chiun affixed a Band-Aid to the still-steaming forehead. Written across it were the words Do NOT RESUSCITATE. He pushed the leather chair away and into a closet, Norvell Ransome's corpulent body-still clutching the half-melted receiver-jiggling with an almost boneless animation.
"Looks like he got the same medicine he tried to feed me," Remo said as the closet door was shut on the corpse.
At Smith's signal, Chiun pushed the wheelchair behind the desk. Smith wordlessly opened a drawer and pulled out a red telephone. He lifted the receiver and waited.
Presently he said, "Mr. President, this is Harold W. Smith. I am calling to inform you of the accidental death of my temporary replacement, Norvell Ransome." Smith paused. "He was electrocuted attempting to tamper with areas of our computer systern he was not authorized to access.... Yes, it is regrettable. Yes, I am prepared to resume my former responsibilities if you will sanction continued CURE operations."